Sans iPhone for a week

~ 14 February 2008 ~

Yesterday I announced I was giving up iPhone for a week, returning to a less feature- and experience-rich phone to see what I miss out on. Today I’ve got the Sony Ericsson K750, one of eight phones I own (pictured second from the top above).

I’ll post a report sometime next week when it’s over. In the meantime, anyone know where I can get an iPhone patch — you know, one of those sticky things you put on your arm? I fear I’ll begin trembling soon.

In other news, Nokia and Sony Ericsson are releasing devices that appear to be targeting would-be iPhone buyers, the Nokia N96 and Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1. Early Android prototypes are beginning to surface, Texas Instruments is testing in-device phone projectors in its labs, Best Buy is among the most recent of U.S. retailers to release a mobile version of its site, and so on and so forth.

Is 2008 finally the year of mobile, specifically mobile media? (Better begin studying if so.)

15 Feb: For the next few days I’m switching to the Toshiba 903T, a handset that was sold primarily in Japan after its release in 2005.

Well, I have a Blackberry Curve through my job that has email and internet. For Christmas I got my wife an iPhone and I have to say that I am a bit jealous. The thing that I envy most is the wifi enabled web browsing. I really hate the dumbed down web browsing and the snail-slow Edge network on my Blackberry. If I ever switch jobs and work somewhere that doesn’t provide me with a phone, I’ll be picking up myself an iPhone right away.

The thing that amazed me most of all about the iPhone is that my wife is very much NOT technically savvy, but she started using her phone right away and didn’t have to look at the instructions much at all. it’s all very intuitive.

I don’t think they have an iPhone withdrawal patch yet, but you can get a shot at the State Health Department for free. I’ve been going there for over a year now.

Cameron, did you find you got notably faster on your QWERTY iPhone keyboard? How many words per minute can you type on it? I keep wondering if the complaints about no tactile feedback are being validated.

I’ll admit that someone actually bought me an iPhone as a gift, but I returned it. I’m a Sprint customer and too many people who I work with are Sprint customers, and it made zero sense for me to switch to AT&T just to use the iPhone. More so, I’m a happy Treo755p owner on a reliable EVDO network (at least in my experience). I have fantastic support for Instant Messaging and SMS texting, better-than-decent email functionality, seamless syncing with my Mac, and the ability to work with attachments like Word, Excel, and PDF files. Put another way, I don’t feel I’m missing anything other than the whimsical experience of flicking my finger to make things move. I should note I’m the biggest Apple fan, but I guess the combination of the AT&T thing and the fact that I don’t feel I’m really missing anything in my current setup, I don’t buy into the whole “I gotta have an iPhone” thing.

I think this is a great concept but I’m not sure I’m strong enough to give mine up. The other day I had to use my wife’s phone which is my old phone. It was like my brain couldn’t deal with the complexity of even having to turn the thing on.

While I still encounter people who have one excuse or another why they haven’t got an iPhone, they are becoming fewer and fewer and more and more of my friends are coming to me and saying they can’t wait to get one.

It’s changed my life in so many ways one of which is that now when I get my six year old son ready for bed he says “just one game daddy, just one game”. He loves the Castle Feud game. Somehow I can’t see him doing the same thing over snake.